BUFFETING.—In Matthew 26:67 and Mark 14:65 this word (Gr. κολαφίζω) is used to describe the ill-treatment received by Christ in the house of the high priest after His condemnation was pronounced. The crowd present seems to have participated in inflicting this personal indignity. St. Mark, with his usual attention to details, notices that the officers received Him with blows of their hands. κολαφίζω carries the significance of a blow with the clenched fist (κόλαφος, ‘a fist’). It vividly represents the brutal manual violence to which our Lord was subjected. The word also came to imply a meaning of general ill-usage or persecution, and, as such, occurs in 1 Corinthians 4:11, 2 Corinthians 12:7 (‘a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me’), 1 Peter 2:20; cf.—
‘A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hath ta’en with equal thanks.’
—Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. ii.
W. S. Kerr.